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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27358810">we're the beginning of the end</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystallized/pseuds/crystallized'>crystallized</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Blaseball (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other, POV Second Person, Past Relationship(s), Sexual Content, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:48:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,147</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27358810</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystallized/pseuds/crystallized</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Come out or go back to bed, dumbass, I can’t do this with you tonight,” they say without turning to look at you, without moving at all. There’s a, there’s something in their voice you’ve never heard before, and it frightens you to hear it from Schneider Bendie of all people.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andrew Solis/Schneider Bendie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>we're the beginning of the end</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Nothing like getting to use Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence in <i>Blaseball</i> of all places. The divergence here is that the Tigers replace the Shoe Thieves (or the Breath Mints, really, either works) in the S10 playoffs, and win it all and beat the Crabs to become the first ascension as well as the team that plays the Pods before the Hall Stars.</p><p>As usual characterization and plotlines come out of the Twitter RP but I messed with them even more than normal this time. I wanted to write this fic and so I made it happen. I just think they're really hot and I think they should fuck it out and contrived a situation where I didn't have to write polyamory negotiations to make it happen okay?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You startle when you realize who it is. Everyone else is asleep, off in their rooms, worn out from celebrating. It’s a lot to celebrate, watching your captain kill a god, but. You’re too anxious and drinking has never been your coping mechanism of choice. You want to be here and at your best when he gets home, just like you always used to. You could have expected someone else to feel the same, but not. This was not who you were expecting.</p><p>“Come out or go back to bed, dumbass, I can’t do this with you tonight,” they say without turning to look at you, without moving at all. There’s a, there’s something in their voice you’ve never heard before, and it frightens you to hear it from Schneider Bendie of all people. You double-back and grab the half-empty box of tissues from your room before joining them. Worse comes to worse, if they do want to fight, you can pretend it’s just for you. They jump, a little, when you click your door shut, but you’ll pretend you didn’t notice.</p><p>It’s never dark in the common room, not without the curtains pulled, but it feels darker, more ominous than earlier tonight as you sit down on the other couch. They’ve been crying. They’re—they’re here, in the apartment, alone, not home in Hades or off causing problems somewhere else but <i>here</i>, and they’re quiet, and they’re crying, and you don’t know what to say but you push the tissues in their direction and they don’t even glare back. You’ve been working on it and things have gotten a lot better, but you haven’t gotten that far, you don’t think, not far enough for them to pick one up and curl in on themself in the corner of the couch, looking smaller than you’ve ever seen them. Schneider Bendie has never been truly vulnerable around you a day in your life and it scares the shit out of you.</p><p>“Hey,” you whisper. You meant to speak normally but the silence, the darkness, it beat you down. They don’t look up. “Bendie?” </p><p>“Don’t make this harder for me, Solis,” comes out of the ball that is Bendie, and that sounds more like it. </p><p>“Where’s Dunlap?” Their body stills and they look up at you and meet your eyes with such venom, such vehemence that you haven’t seen in years that it shocks you. They don’t say anything but it comes rushing back to you all at once, the Tigers taking one victory after another in the playoffs, the defeated look in Bendie’s eyes when you lost to them in the semifinals, their third championship victory and loss against the Shelled One, and then—well, you got so caught up in seeing Dom on the field again, everyone did, none of you even thought to wonder what happened to the Tigers since they disappeared off the field. Fuck. “Do you…have you heard anything?”</p><p>“No,” they spit back, clipped, angry, “nobody has. Thanks for remembering there was another team out there, though, I’m sure they appreciate it wherever they are.” They look at everything but you as they pick up another tissue from the box. “Everyone wants to congratulate me on our captain killing a horrible god and nobody wants to talk about the team that fucking vanished off the face of the fucking earth after losing to it.” They go quiet, then, tucking their head to hide silent tears. You don’t even think about it but your body moves to the couch with Bendie of its own accord. It’s what Dom would have done. It’s at least part of why you didn’t even stop to think when you shoved yourself in front of the flame for them—Dom would have done it without thinking and he’s a part of you. You reach out and wait, meet their eyes, hold so they can push you away before you touch them…but the rejection never comes and your hand latches on their wrist. They gasp like you shocked them and well, maybe you did, but it doesn’t stop you thumbing circles against their pulse point, soft, quiet. </p><p>You look at Bendie sometimes like a dark reflection of yourself, the way Dom described them from before you joined the team, young and bold and so sure of themself, so arrogant, like you were in the time before blaseball, but completely justified about it. There’s a beauty to them. Oh, you hated them, they made themselves easy to hate, but you have an eye for beautiful things and Bendie is one of them. But that was then and this is now—you spent the last year forming a strange truce of a friendship with Bendie, saved their life, had them poke ink into your skin in that too-intimate moment on the roof, so they don’t get to sit on your couch in the dark and cry alone tonight. You’re still not entirely sure why they’re on your couch at all, even with Dunlap being nowhere to be found, but while you would have loved to needle them about it in the daylight you can’t bring yourself to do anything but ask gently now.</p><p>“Why are you here? Why aren’t you home?” They laugh but it’s dark, dangerous. You’ve heard Bendie laugh with joy and this sound that comes out of them is a cruel mockery.</p><p>“Dun’s not there. It’s not home anymore.” This isn’t your home either, you don’t say, but you don’t need to, they know that perfectly well and you’re not here to get into a fight, really. They sigh. “I’m here because I need to be. When he gets home. You can understand that much, at least?” You understand the impulse; you don’t understand why <i>Bendie</i> has it, when they could be asleep in warm, beautiful, baffling Hades instead of sitting in a too-small too-dark apartment in NYC, but you hold their wrist with one hand and offer another tissue with the other, and let your eyes and fingers meet when they take it because you may not understand the why but you understand the what on a level too deep to ever forget.</p><p>Gods, you—there’s something—it shocks you, this time, because for a moment you don’t see Bendie or yourself but <i>Dom</i>, sad, proud, scared, gorgeous Dominic Marijuana, crying into your shoulder the night before he died. You see brown eyes (Dom’s are blue now, you remember with a start) full of guilt and fear and <i>this</i> is the moment. You’ve known for a while that everything that went down with Bendie was at least as much your fault as theirs, you’ve had enough conversations with enough people about it, but this is the moment where you don’t just know but understand how Bendie was Dom’s friend, how they spent years by each others’ sides and the only thing that broke them apart was you appearing on the scene. You wanted Dom from the first moment you saw him outside a stadium so you turned up the charm; you didn’t expect to fall in love so hard and so fast but once you did it was just easier to continue to fight with the one person on the team who remained suspicious and rude, the one person who didn’t want you around the object of your affections. But they were close, and as the new guy it should have been your responsibility to keep everything on the level and you did everything but that. Sure, everything was happening so much, you and Dom were both busy, there was Randy, there were games to play, you were getting to know the rest of the team, but there’s fault on your shoulders for the mess that has Bendie sitting here tonight and for once that fault has weight to it.</p><p>“Fuck, Bendie, I’m sorry,” you breathe out, letting go of their wrist and backing away. They look down at their arm with something like surprise, and then back at you. The tears have not stopped running down their face but they look…tired. They look like they need a hug and you almost move to give it to them.</p><p>“It wasn’t all you, idiot.” It says something, you think, that they seem to be on your train of thought already. “You know what the last thing Dom said to me before he died was?” You shake your head, because you don’t. He never told you about all the individual conversations he had, you knew he had them but it…you didn’t have enough time. “He asked me, begged me not to leave, to be there for the team no matter what, and you know what I did? I fucked off to Hades, Solis, as soon as I possibly could. Didn’t talk to anyone on the team at all for nearly a year outside of what I needed to do to play. I failed him, and I need to apologize.”</p><p>“You didn’t need to be here right away. You can apologize later.” They shake their head angrily.</p><p>“Fuck off. You don’t—you can’t understand. Everything was perfect for you, you joined the team and won his heart right away. I tried for years until all that was left to me was to give up, to take affection from someone who would actually reciprocate, and they’re gone now too. I don’t need to hear about what I can and can’t do from the person who stood by while Dom died!” They clasp a hand over their mouth in shock, like they didn’t mean to say it, and you sure as shit hope they didn’t because no matter how hurt they are your absolute first instinct is to take a swing at the person on the couch with you, your arm raises and your fist curls into a ball before you catch yourself from doing something you regret, like actually punching them. Still, fuck that.</p><p>“Fuck you, Bendie. You’re right. You did run away. Where were you that night we were all mourning? You loved him? Why weren’t you here with the rest of us who loved him too?” You stop for a moment as your thoughts finally catch up to their words. “Fucking hell, Bendie, he loved you so much. You broke his heart when you went with Dunlap, broke it further when you left. You can’t act like you didn’t know. The whole team knew how much he was still hurting by the time I came along! You found your love and left him behind, and I needed to pick up the pieces and convince him he was worthy of love, because of what you did.” They leap at you then, like a tiger finally showing its stripes, and they have you pinned down but you can see the pain in their tear-stained eyes.</p><p>“You’re lying. I would have known. He would have said something.”</p><p>“He wanted to.” Gods. There’s something extremely broken about you, isn’t there, that your heart is racing like this with Bendie holding you down, feral disbelief wilding out in their eyes. You thought there was something earlier, with them crying and vulnerable, but this…you have to imagine that Dom never saw Bendie like this; you can’t imagine how he could have resisted if he had. “You fell into bed with the first person who told you something sweet and he didn’t get a chance to say anything before you were gone.”</p><p>“Shut the fuck up Solis you don’t understand a god damned thing! Dun loved me and now they’re gone! You won then and you win now too, you’re getting Dom back from the dead, what more do you want to take from me?” Fuck. You shouldn’t. You can’t. You’re going to lose your mind if you don’t. You literally could not pick a worse time. There’s never going to be a better one. You raise your arms and put your hands in their hair, and in one swift motion drag Bendie down into a kiss.</p><p>This isn’t a sweet thing, not like the first time you kissed Dom, no. They bite your lip and you pull their hair; they put a hand around your neck and you respond by shoving at their shirt to dig your nails into their back. All the anger, all the fear, all the pain is channeled here into this one endless kiss as you dare each other to be the first to break it, to be the one who collapses under the need for breath. You both fall to the floor and they’ve got your wrists pinned above your head all of a sudden and you’re shaking with the feel of it, of losing control of the situation (like you’ve been at all in control of the situation since Bendie turned those too-bright eyes on you half an hour ago, you haven’t been). This is the worst idea you’ve ever had but you can’t bring yourself to stop it. They’re vulnerable, they’re grieving; they’re the hottest thing you’ve seen in years and the fire where they scratch your skin awakens something long buried inside you. Not because—you’ve hooked up since Dom died, okay, you talked about it, talked a lot about it actually, figured out something that worked for you both in case he was able to come back someday—so it’s not because of that per se, but those have all been…something else. Not like this. This is something wild and exquisite that threatens to overwhelm you if you don’t get control of it, if you could stop and think for a moment but they’re biting bruises into your shoulder and you can’t think of anything else but needing to touch, straining your arms against the spot on the floor where Bendie holds them down with surprising strength. </p><p>They let go with a smirk and in the next instant you’re tearing their shirt over their head, revealing long lines of smooth pale muscle that you’re aching to get a mark on, but they push one knee between your legs and <i>fuck</i>, it feels so good and holy shit wait you are not going to fuck Schneider Bendie (you mean, you’re not going to let Schneider Bendie fuck you, the traitorous part of your mind offers with a shiver) on the floor of the team’s common room, no fucking way, you’ve hit a lot of lows together but this would be one too far. You scramble backwards on the floor, away from them, everything turns cold including their expression but you are better than your impulses, you have to be.</p><p>“Look,” you try, breathing heavy, “we have to talk we can’t just—“</p><p>“Solis, I understand that you always have to be the perfect nice guy, you always have to do things the right way, but I’m not fucking interested.” They crawl forward towards you and a thousand more metaphors stream through your thoughts; you’ve never felt more like prey in your life. They sit up and start ticking items off their fingers in a voice heavy with irony. “You want me, I want you, you thought about kissing me on the roof,” fuck, guilty as charged, “because you’re a sap, we’re both extremely freaked out about the long-dead man we mutually loved coming back to life, we both think we failed him by being fucked up, you’re hot, I’m hot, we like hurting each other, you’re not taking advantage of me, the other love of my life ascended and I have never had a healthy coping mechanism in my entire goddamn life. We good?” They pin your wrists back down again and drag their teeth up the underside of your arm in one long aching motion so intense you cry out with it, and they drop one of your wrists to cover your mouth in response.</p><p>“You’re not fucking me on the floor,” you grit out through their fingers, and their eyes sparkle. They climb off of you then, grinning all the while (gods, the way the light reflects off Bendie’s skin, glints off their teeth like a wild animal, they’re so right about how scared you are, Bendie sees right through you so easily) and help pull you to your feet and then into your room, their old one, and the minute you’re past the threshold you’re shoved forcefully into the bed, Bendie closing the door delicately behind them before climbing up above you and meeting your lips with theirs again.</p><p>It goes on for what feels like hours but can’t be more than one. Dom was always—Dom was like a river, sometimes intense, sometimes calm, a balm on your soul and on your skin. You and Dom treated each other like something precious that would not last. Bendie, though, Bendie’s a forest fire that knows you’re actually fireproof (you are), they aren’t afraid of you and they know you’ll still be standing on the other side and you delight in that, in the liberation there is in not having to worry too much about them. You trade bites and kisses with cries and whispers—they hold your arms behind your back and you suck a bruise into their collarbone; they mark your chest with a furious scratch and you take your own turn pinning them down until they’re begging to move. But it’s not all…there’s an understanding between you two, a few lines you won’t break, a sense you share that you’ve been leading up to this moment for years and this chance might not come again so you both live in every single moment doing nothing other than exactly what feels best and damn does it all feel so good. It’s all so much met with the pleasure of not being afraid that you lose all sense of the world with stars in your eyes and Bendie’s name on your lips far sooner than you wanted, and they follow in equal measure with a whisper that you choose to believe is for you. </p><p>You lay there, breathing, with Bendie collapsed in your arms looking at least satisfied if not happy, and you think you might finally sleep when they jerk away, climb up and out of bed and away from you. “Hey?”</p><p>“I shouldn’t—“ You reach out and grab their wrist before they get too far, pull them back towards the bed.</p><p>“You were right, you know. We don't know what's going to happen and that's terrifying. But you don't have to go at it alone. Stay?” They smile, then, tired, softly, and fall back in with you with far too much grace. “We’ll figure all of this out. We always do.”</p><p>“If this goes terribly I’m blaming it on you,” Bendie mumbles into your shoulder, and you grin, and flip over the blankets, and let yourself fall asleep.</p>
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